Thousands of Tiny Taps Almost at Once
Almost frozen rain drops bounce
off slanted glass: molten BBs
the second impact of which
humans can barely detect.
The defroster-warmed windshield
lubricates the basal slide,
a glacial race across car parts
toward salted road like wrist blood
down fingers. Red and blue sirens
intermittently flash blinding,
weary authority from cops, ambulances,
and plow apparatus-strapped pickups.
The shorting-neon bar-sign effect prisms
through each half-flattened drop in the mire--
Tetris-piled-ice sky-scrapers, an opaque
cityscape on a bedrock of wiper blades.
Flip the switch! See a civilization
destroyed! The rubber barbarian
horde squeegees the watery wen
into compressed detritus, then resets.
Oil-fueled blades slice ice aside
into dross monoliths, offal sacrifices
destined to feed roadside sluices.
Obliviously eager new sleet
floods the excavated tabula rasa--
the abhorred-vacuum, now a province
filled by termites, protected witnesses,
contraceptive sponges, and colonists.
Gravity hauls the slush across
the transparent Diolkos, unaware
of its shivering nakedness, bare
liquid held together by sheer
temperature like exposed, decrepit
houses in leafless woods,
revealed only in winter,
about to be obliterated.
Scott Supak
February, 2009
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